


Personal Relations

by dsa_archivist



Category: due South
Genre: Drama, Humor, M/M, Romance, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-05-19
Updated: 1999-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-11 03:15:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11139990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsa_archivist/pseuds/dsa_archivist
Summary: Ray instructs Fraser in the arts of personal relations and the results are very satisfying, if comical.





	Personal Relations

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Speranza, the archivist: this story was once archived at [Due South Archive](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Due_South_Archive). To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Due South Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/duesoutharchive).

 

Personal Relations

Happy New year everyone - may all our wishes for 97  
come true! Standard disclaimers apply. This story is for the amusement  
of fans only. Comments - especially about whether the comedy has worked  
\- are welcome. May I take this opportunity to thank Elaine Walker for  
her more than generous help with this story. All together, 'thank you  
kindly, Elaine.'

**Rated: R (m/m)**

#  PERSONAL RELATIONS

BY LAURIE TAYLOR

Ray's phone trilled. The detective removed his hand from its comfy resting place on Ben's upper thigh and, with one of his monumental put-upon sighs, wriggled round to dig the annoying contraption out of the back seat, whizzing round a corner simultaneously. Ben's eyebrows shot up at the blatant traffic violations and opened his mouth to deliver a stern reprimand, well a 'firm' reprimand, or rather a 'polite' reprimand, that is ... 

"WHAT?" Ray was snapping curtly into the phone. "Ma?" He blanched. "Okay, yeah I'm sorry - I didn't mean to be rude." He made a pantomime of rolling his eyes skyward at his ma's continued tirade. "So what do you want anyway?" The riv took a left turn far too sharply, there was the sound of screeching tyres behind, but Ray was oblivious. He was glowering at his absent mother. "And why can't Francesca go? Come off it! She sits on her ass all day - sorry her 'backside.' So? Okay! Fine, I'll just drop my life then. Bye." And he threw the cell phone onto the back seat narrowly missing Diefenbaker. 

"Is something wrong, Ray?" Ben asked innocently. 

"No." 

"Are you sure?" 

"I don't wanna talk about it," Ray asserted and then, contrary as always, proceeded to do just that. "Maria wants me to go pick Terri up from school tonight. I should become a taxi driver." 

The last rather sulky comment, delivered with what could only be described as a meaningful glare at Ben himself, made no sense to the Canadian - taxi drivers were in the habit of procuring fiscal reimbursement for their services which, clearly, Ray was not - so he nodded his head sagely and said 'ah.' Ray threw his friend a mock angry look, ignored the next two stop signs as retribution and pulled up illegally outside Terri's school. Ben would rather have liked the cop's hand to return to its previous position but concluded that such displays, chaste though they were, were best reserved for more private places. 

Ray muttered dark observations about nieces he considered 'pesky' and sisters he considered pains in an anatomically sensitive region. The moment he spotted his seven year old niece though, Ray's attitude changed; smiling from ear to ear he hoisted her into his arms, blew a raspberry on her cheek and chivvied her into the back of the car, commanding her gruffly to put the seat belt on. Ben hid a smile at Ray's mercurial temper and greeted their small charge gravely. 

"Hi, uncle Ben. Miss Regan made me stay in at break." 

"Oh dear!" Ben stuttered, imagining Terri's guilt-ridden expression and extreme mortification at this stern punishment. 

Ray snorted. "So what did you do this time, huh?" 

There was a pregnant pause whilst Terri squirmed in the back seat and pretended to be engrossed with Dief, then, "We-ell ... Not much really." 

"Terri," Ray warned in his 'no nonsense, I'm a cop' voice. 

"It was Sarah Brightman's fault!" 

"Ah, now I'm sure if you were to explain that the complicity lies with Miss Brightman, your teacher will be more than happy to accept your innocence - " Ben began. 

" - The truth, Terri," Ray interrupted. 

"Okay! I kinda pulled Sarah's hair. A bit. And kinda cut it. With scissors." 

The traffic was pretty dreadful; too many lazy yutzes chauffeuring spoilt kids about, as Ray put it. Terri had recovered from her sulk and had spent the last ten minutes chattering non-stop. Her endless gush seemed to wash right over Ray but Ben felt was only polite to listen and respond. 

"- and then we had to go into the Hall for Personal Relations. Dead boring," Terri asserted with volumes of disgust. Ray snorted again, seeming to find something amusing. "Tell uncle Ben more about it," he invited with a beatific smile and Ben nodded readily - a lamb to the slaughter. 

"Well, first Miss Regan showed us some slides. They were dead cool. She went as red as a strawberry - " 

" - Beetroot, Terri - " 

" - when she told us about *you know.*" Terri nodded shrewdly, looked smug at the thought of a grownup being humiliated. 

"Pardon me?" said Ben totally mystified. 

"About *sex,*" Terri supplied with relish. 

"Oh my!" And Ben flushed at the hot, naughty glance Ray threw his way. 

"Yeah, she showed us lots of *rude* pictures." 

"Sex isn't rude, Terri," Ray murmured gently but his niece wasn't listening. 

"And she told us where babies come from too. Do *you* know where babies 

come from, uncle?" 

Ben writhed a little at the directness of the question but, as his father was fond of saying, 'if you're old enough to ask the question, you're old enough for the answer.' "Why certainly, Terri, from the mother's tummy." 

Ray choked back a giggle as Terri, with that patented air of superiority that only the young can foster, replied, "No, stupid, in the wooom!" 

"That's right, kid," Ray said as he parked the riv and let his tiny niece out of her seat belt. She gave him a bear hug and, with Fraser following at a discreet distance, the quartet entered the Vecchio home. There was no-one in so Ray settled Ben, Dief and Terri at the breakfast bar whilst he poured out milk and raided the cookies jar. Terri wasn't allowed cookies, of course, but then she wasn't allowed to eat hot dogs either or to play on the big slide in he park - facts which slipped Ray's mind whenever he took her out for the day. He sat down and squeezed his niece's hand. "You understand everything Miss Regan told you, right?" 

"Sure." 

"If you don't, you know you can ask your ma or me, right?" 

"Sure." 

"What happens between two people who love each other is very special and beautiful, Terri." 

"Guess so." 

"Good." He kissed her forehead and returned to his milk. 

A pause. 

"Uncle Ray?" 

"Yeah, kid?" 

"Why do mommies have tadpoles in their woooms?" 

The rest of the afternoon passed uneventfully. Terri, bored with the subject of where babies came from, had retired to her bedroom to watch 'The Simpsons' with Diefenbaker. Ray dragooned Ben into helping him wax the riv for no other reason than seeing he man's compact muscles work under his light shirt, then they collapsed in the front room, Ray drawing Ben's head across his lap where he could play with the lush hair and tease the ears. 

"Terri is ... inquisitive, isn't she?" Ben said and adjusted his collar uncomfortably. 

Ray laughed and kissed Ben's earlobe. "She's a Vecchio, Benny. 'Course she is!" He read Ben's expression with the ease of long practise and added, 

"Kinda direct too, huh? Especially if you ain't used to it. Don't let it get to you." 

"Oh well, I wouldn't say she 'got to me,' Ray. No, I'm sure such ah, ... refreshing interest is all to her credit." He took a deep breath as though steeling himself and with excruciating care pronounced, "It's cool, Ray." 

Ray gurgled appreciatively, caressed Ben's cheek. "Cool, huh? Is this cool too?" And he leaned down to kiss those sumptuous lips. 

Ben felt the colour rise in his cheeks, ignored it. "Very," he replied and initiated the next blissful contact. 

They kissed long and languorous, delighting in the complexity, the never ending variation, in so simple an exercise. Ray hummed deep in his throat, the vibration setting off a tingling dance in every one of Ben's nerve endings. 

'Discovery' had come exactly 124 hours ago and since then Ben just couldn't get enough of Ray; of his soft-skinned hands with their long supple fingers and competent touch, of his sparkly eyes which danced and changed from green to gold when he was around and his lilting voice which, to Ben, no opera singer's resonance and timbre could have matched. He'd been scared, he remembered, scared of the commitment, the haunting possibility that they might not be right for each other as lovers, that Ray might re of his simplicity or that, most particularly, his reserve and inexperience might damn their fledgling love to resentment, tarnished dreams and long painful silences. 

He need not have worried. Ray, with that prescience of his, had read the goblins of doubt in his Benny's eyes, quietened the stuttered apologies with his lips and cradled the wildly hammering heart against his own. In a word, communion. 

They had supper, at Mrs Vecchio's insistence, with the family then escaped to Ben's apartment. The mountie had been supremely uncomfortable at Ray's perfectly delivered lie to his ma about an all night stake out but he'd been bungled outside before he could babble an amendment. 

It was like he was possessed as the apartment door groaned shut; he pulled Ray strongly into his arms, shoved him with some force against the counter and attacked his mouth like a wolf feeding on carrion. Ray, sensing the man's desperation, answered wildness with wildness until they were both hazy-eyed and panting. The cop noted the minutest crease in Benny's uniform and the lone curl out of place on the perfectly regimented head - he smiled like a thousand summer days. 

"You need it bad, huh?" 

"Yes, Ray," came the strangled reply and Ben reached, wild for this, for Ray's buttons. Ray caught his hand though, stilled it, pressed it against the warmth of his chest and stroked the back of it soothingly. 

"Shhh, Benny. We've got our whole lives together - " 

"I want you - this. Ray, please!" And he was almost savage with repressed need. 

"I know. I want you too, love, but slow, okay? We've gotta slow down here." Easy then to cradle that dark head against his chest where the quiet beat of his heart could quieten and soothe; not so easy to turn down the plea in those candid blue eyes t ugh. "We promised - no further until we're both ready, remember?" The beautiful head raised, soft lips quirked in that endearing shy smile. 

"I'm ready, Ray." 

They gazed at each other for time uncounted. Ray smiled, nodded, "Okay, Benny." 

The drugstore was quiet at this time. Ben was jittery, miserable, his every sense afire with frustrated sexual arousal. A week ago he would not even have formed the thought, 'I don't want to go out;' a week ago he would have submitted to Ray's wishes ssively, oppressing his own feelings without consciously being aware of them. But Ray had taught him self awareness as well as other things, so tonight, when Ray had broken off their lovemaking before it had scarcely begun to come down to the drugstore of all places, Ben had felt a faint oh so faint stirring of petty resentment. 

Ray grinned at him, which didn't help and pulled him over to the birth control counter. Ben risked one look at the blatant assortment, blushed a few shades darker than his uniform and went to stand at attention outside before his dirty mind could wonder what one did with cherry flavoured condoms. A few minutes later, Ray joined him, giggled mischievously and wafted the discreet packet undiscreetly under Fraser's nose. The condoms were bright yellow. 

"Oh, my!" squeaked Ben, reminded of the one and only time he'd had to ... equip himself before and the twenty minutes it had taken to muster the courage to go into Mrs Godsey's General Store. He high-tailed it to the riv where Dief made the situation worse by sniggering at him. 

Once they were settled in the riv, and Dief had been placated for the evening by a whole box of donuts, Ray turned seriously to his lover. "Time we had a mano et mano here." 

"Oh," Ben assumed his most earnest expression, "what about?" 

"About hunting!" 

"The Inuit believe - " 

Ray's arms were gesticulating wildly. "About us, you great Canadian dope!" 

"You want *us* to go hunting ...?" 

Getting Frannie to forswear men'd be easier than this!! "No, Fraser, lose the hunting. We need to have a talk about us, me and you." Ray enunciated grimly, relentless as a soldier about to go over the top. "About our sexual relationship." 

"Ah!" He could feel the heat rise in his cheeks - and somewhere else to. 

"Yes well, thank you kindly for elucidating, Ray. I do find your, shall we say, eccentric leaps in logic somewhat difficult to comprehend and, though humour is no doubt a powerf - " 

"Benny?" 

"Yes, Ray?" 

"You're babbling." 

"Oh." 

Ray ran a hand over his slicked back hair, felt the tension in his neck from a mixture of stress and sexual frustration. "Where were we? The mano et mano. Earlier - with Terri? - I guess, I figured you're not too experienced, right?" Benny was looking so self conscious that Ray reached for him, right there in the car lot, and kissed his forehead, his cheek, his lips. "I need to know, Benny. So I know how far I can go." 

"I thought we'd settled that, Ray. I told you in the apartment I was ready." Those hazel-green eyes were very direct, solemn as Ray said, "Yeah, Benny but do you really understand what we're going to do? I bet your grandmother's library didn't have any books on gay sex, right?" 

A swift shake of the head and Ben supremely relieved that Dief had fallen asleep all over Ray's overcoat. 

"You're a Canadian, what do Canadians know about sex?" 

"Well, Ray," Ben sat up straighter at the slur, "it's not like Canadians have never had sexual liaisons, in fact -" 

"What's KY, Benny?" the cop interrupted as though testing his theory. 

"Well - " 

"Rubbers? Do you know what they are, what you do with 'em - " 

"Well, Ray, as a matter of fact - " 

"No, of course not, you're a mountie!" 

This was becoming way complicated! He'd kinda assumed limited experience on Ben's part, of course - the way the man froze in stupefacation if a woman (or a man for the matter) so much as glanced at him, that ridiculous phrase 'she's with child, Ray' when discovering Dief's girlfriend was pregnant - but if the Canadian's answers to Ray's subtle yet probing questions were anything to go by, the man could very well be as innocent as ... well, as Terri. 

He glanced over at the man's handsome face; you couldn't get a more clean-cut, square jawed profile than that! Ray yanked the riv into gear and drove off, mumbling to himself in a highly agitated manner. "Gonna have to show him everything." 

Fraser followed his friend into the supermarket. "This'll explain everything," Ray had promised confidently and Ben was still waiting patiently for everything to be just so explained. To his growing list of 

'everything,' Ben had now had the opportunity to add 'why was Ray obsessing over vegetables?' 

"Hey, you," the cop was saying rudely to a hapless shop assistant, "what straight vegetables have you got?" 

The assistant - JT, according to his name tag - sighed heavily at yet another crank. He swapped his gum to the other cheek and left his satsuma stacking. "Carrots," he said repressively, "straight as they come. Never see a cross-dressing carrot, right? Potatoes, they're good. Grapefruits - now they're a problem on account of some of them being *pink*." 

"I said straight ones! Ones that aren't crooked." 

"Right." Dourly. The two walked over to inspect the marrows, Fraser trotting behind them, wondering if now was a good time to ask why the adjective 'pink' had been given a special emphasis in TJ's statement. Ray rifled through the selection of polished artistically arranged marrows mumbling to himself, occasionally tugging out a healthy specimen to examine it more closely. "Not bad... Hmm, passable... Too small, real weedy. Way too small. What's the matter with this store anyway - can't a person get a decent sized marrow!" 

TJ glowered and tried to rearrange his destroyed display - twenty minute's work ruined! "Yes, sir," he said venemously. "How about this one?" 

"Too small, moron. Something bigger..." 

"This?" 

"Do we look like elephants?!" was Ray's totally incomprehensible reply to that one. 

"With all due respect, sir," began TJ with no respect at all, "may I ask what dish you hope to make with your straight vegetable?" 

"I was wondering that," Ben put in politely. 

*"Cucumbers!"* declared Ray. 

"Ah," said Ben. 

He'd heard of .... ah, less than requisite sexual practices before, of course; like Orville, Inuvik's pilot, who insisted silverskin pickled onions were an aphrodisiac. But he hadn't thought *Ray* was, well, like that - kinky. The very adjective conjured up saucy images and made him blush. He pointed an impeccable finger at the kitchen, not wanting Dief to be corrupted, and the wolf slunk off to curl under the open window. "Okay," Ray was saying, "I don't know how clued up you are, right?" 

"Yes, Ray," he replied obediently. 

Ray gave his friend a measuring look trying to gauge whether Ben was following this or not. "Right. So I figure we thrash it out right from the top. Gonna show you how to roll on a condom - " 

"I already - " 

" - Only way I know of covering all bases. This is how Mrs Westheimer explained it to us at school - I kinda figure she knows best." He fiddled with the supermarket purchase, giggled, made some confounding remark about it being packaged in a brown pap bag and waved the cucumber about, looking proud of himself. "So you get the *cucumber,* see? You want it er *ripe.* If it's soft, it ain't no good. Got it?" 

They were back to the cucumber! A minute age, Ray had said he was going to demonstrate the art of applying a condom! Perhaps he should take notes, this had signs of becoming complicated. "Yes, Ray," he mumbled because his partner had asked him a question and it was rude not to respond. 

"Then you open the packet." Ray tore the yellow condom's cellophane pouch open with his teeth. He chuckled. "I got us extra large, Benny \- know what I mean?" 

He was going to put the condom on the vegetable? But surely ...? Ben raised an eyebrow in shock then berated himself for being close-minded and nationalistic. Perhaps American culture was merely different from Canadian in the area of sexual protection. 'different' not 'wrong.' He was in America now and as his father was fond of paraphrasing, 'when in America do as the Americans do,' so he should strive to accommodate Ray's cultural practices. Ray pinched the tip between thumb and forefinger and gently rolled the rubber down over the vegetable. "And down it goes. Make sure you don't squeeze too hard because we don't want the flesh bruised and then you smear it in KY - " 

He had assumed, from the adverts that KY jelly was an idiomatic trade name for a cooking oil. Did Ray's condom-applying demonstration require the vegetable to be cooked? Surely the condom's rubber would melt during the heating process... 

" - And remember to change the rubber for each, you know, *new* vegetable." 

"Oh, certainly, Ray." Faintly. 

Ray dismantled his vegetable monstrosity with a flourish and reached for Ben. "That's Lesson One, Benny. Wanna guess what Lesson Two's about?" And before Ben had time to fumble a reply, he'd captured his lips strongly, invading his mouth with his tongue. He slid out of his own jacket and, keeping it playful and light, removed Ben's lanyard, leather strap and belts. 

It was, however, far too much for Ben. Sexual deprivation, frustration and now the feel of Ray's electric hands on oversensitized flesh meant he just couldn't hold back. All he could do was bite back a whimper as Ray let him go for a second to pull him over to his bed. The world seemed to have compressed and elongated both at the same time like he was in the Hall of Mirrors at Tuktoyuktuk's Spring Fair. Kisses followed, impossibly deeper than before, then hasty hands were ripping off his jacket and hitching his white shirt out of the way so lips could find the hardening buds of his nipples. He collapsed backwards on the bed, head thrown awry. Ray went with him, suckling, nipping, biting the cherry pink nubs whilst his hands kneaded Ben's back like a cat treading his mother's teat for milk. He'd been trying to keep some vestige of control, wanting more for their first time than a swift hand-job but he soon realised from Benny's uninhibited groans and madly thrusting body, that he wasn't going to get his dream. Shrugging to himself, Ray yanked Fraser's pants open and simultaneously thrust his tongue into Ben's navel. His hand was just about to close round the rampant flesh it touched when -- 

Ben climaxed savagely, crying out in Eskimo. 

"Wow," Ray said, impressed and startled and concerned all at the same time. He drew the Canadian's unresponsive body into his arms and contented himself with stroking the midnight of his hair and raining butterfly kisses on the rosy cheeks until Ben surfaced. Azure blue eyes opened, focused. Ben smiled. Ray's open expression spoke more eloquently of his deep abiding love and commitment than all the poetry in the world. "Thank you kindly, Ray," he mumbled, replete. 

They drifted, warm and fuzzy, for what seemed an age of blissful communion. Ray described patterns across Fraser's chest, drawn to its milk white paleness, the skin never having known the sun. Eventually Ben stirred, felt his penis hardening against his thigh. The Mountie ducked his head down and, in that particularly endearing fashion of his, looked up through his lashes at his lover. 

"It would appear, Ray, that I am eager for Lesson Three," he said solemnly. 

Ray almost came there and then but he planted a swift kiss on Ben's nose and struggled out of the covers. "Way to go, Benny! Just have to, you know, pay the old water bill - back in a sec. Get comfy, okay?" He hopped over to the door, noticing Dief was not under the window anymore. Gone out presumably - good; there was something slightly perverted about having a sentient wolf watching you. He pulled on his overcoat to make the chilly journey to the shared bathroom. There was no way he could last, no way at all, so he'd jerk off in the john like a fourteen year old on his first date, Benny none the wiser, and hopefully be ready for a repeat performance once his lover was. He'd just closed the door when he remembered something. "Oh and Benny? Lose the Stetson, okay?" 

He listened for Ray's departing footfalls - interesting it took him only seventeen steps to reach the bathroom along the hall; it took Ben nineteen - and got out of the bed. He stripped and wiped himself down at the sink feeling rather gooey and thinking grimly of dry cleaning bills. Ray's dismantled cucumber ornament caught his eye. 

He raised an eyebrow. 

Fraser had just clambered back into bed and blown out the lamp when he heard Ray returning. Relying on his hearing, he tracked his lover into the kitchen, heard him gulp approximately half a glass of water, then counted eight footfalls, coming closer, d the sound of silk rustling to the floor accompanied by a strong waft of cologne and musk. 

"Benny?" 

He was too overcome to do anything but wrap his arms round the now naked Ray and hold on until the positive swarm - was that the correct collective noun? - of butterflies had settled down in his stomach. 

"Relax, love. This is going to be beautiful, okay?" Ray would have liked to see Fraser's face but figured the extinguished lamp was a subtle signal. 

"I know, Ray, and I want this - very much. Show me the way, Ray." 

And he did. Fairy kisses across face, neck and shoulders evolved into sucks and swirls. Soft fluttering touches, designed to relax and sensitise became more intimate, caresses became deeper as he swept his hands all over Fraser's torso. Fraser mirrored the motions, running his hands, which seemed clumsy in comparison to Ray's, through the scratchy, twirly curls on the cop's chest, was rewarded by Ray's bellow of delight. He didn't feel afraid anymore - how could he with those green-hazel depths, visible even in the half gloom, fixed on his, inviting confidence, dispelling anxiety? Ray pulled back the covers, touched his best friend, partner, lover - there - for the very first time, skin to skin. Satin, beaver pelt, delicate porcelain - no adjective could describe the beauty of Benny at his most intimate. He was proud and straight, in the dim golden streetlight, responsive to caress and leaking wetly from the pale head. He was uncut too and Ray felt a mixture of profound awe and dizzying terror as he eased away the protective skin and touched the glans; for the shock that ran through Ben's body was like lightening striking. His testicles were pert globes, drawn up close and needy, almost hairless. 

Continuing his gentle exploration, murmuring reassurance all the time, he urged Ben to raise his knees and followed the skin back to its source, back to that virgin hole. He knew then what he wanted to do. He blanketed Ben's body with his own, fires unquenchable roaring in his balls, so he could look into those dazed glorious eyes. "Benny, love?" 

"Yes. Yes. Ray, hurry!" 

Visions of Fraser's large hands squeezing his cock as they rolled a condom into place nearly had him shooting right there and he had half a mind to throw discretion to the wind and forget precautions altogether but he reached for the condoms and jelly in his pocket. 

What was he doing? Not more vegetable decorating! "Leave it, Ray!" He threw the condom away. "We don't need that!" 

"Are you sure?" 

"Please, Ray!" It was as close to a beg as he'd ever heard. 

"Okay, lover, let me get at you. Yeah. There, Benny! There! Oh, yeah, can you feel that?" And sliding his oiled finger inside the relaxed passage, Ray prepared the way for his raging erection. Ben's internal skin felt wonderful, creamy soft, as smooth and silky as caramel. With a soul deep kiss against the pain to come - the wound before the eruption of pleasure, like the death throe before the advent of heaven - he positioned himself \- And the two were joined. It felt almost sacrilegious to shatter the moment of perfect union by moving but his cock was angry with repressed desire and he just *needed* to move, to thrust inside that tight clingy passage. Soon a rhythm was established and Ben, inhibitions and etiquette forgotten before the tidal wave of sex, kneaded Ray's buttocks in time to the beat and, just as the world flipped upside down, initiated his own penetration by digging his finger into Ray. 

They came together. 

The first thing he was aware of next morning was a wet, very cold something snuffling his cheek. Fraser opened his eye and came nose to nose with a rather sulky Diefenbaker. Ray was cupped over his body, head ducked down between his ribs and hipbone. 

"Where have you been?" he asked the wolf silently. 

Dief snorted as though the answer were obvious - hunting. Tracking warm furry creatures to their lairs. He licked his chops thoughtfully, snuffled Ben's bare chest and suddenly fixed his master with a stern glare. Ben would have sprung to attention were he standing up at the lupine rebuke. 

"What? It's perfectly natural. Moreover, I don't need your permission, thank you kindly, Diefenbaker." 

Dief sniggered triumphantly and trotted happily into the kitchen. Oh dear, thought Ben, he thinks he's won that round. Ray moved against him, all agitation and fluid motion. Hazy eyes opened and Ben watched entranced as the irises changed from cognac brown to green flecked with gold. "Hey." 

"Good morning, Ray," he replied and stretched like a wolf, popping his spine. 

"Yeah. Last night was -" Ray stopped dead. Blinked. 

He opened his eyes, knuckled them, shook his head from side to side as though something were shaking loose, and looked again. 

Still there. 

"Benny?" 

"Yes, love?" 

"Why have you got a cucumber on your footlocker? And why is it wearing a condom?" 

Ray hammered on the communal bathroom door, pointedly turning his back on his lover. "Hey! You gonna finish in there sometime this century!? We're waiting! Hello, we're waiting." And he banged again. 

"How was I to know the vegetable ... creation was merely a demonstration?" 

"What did you think it was?! Huh? A sacrifice to Doctor Ruth, Godess of Sex?" 

Who? "Well, no, Ray - " 

"You actually thought that it was an American thing to stick condoms on vegetables, right?" Ray spat loudly and glowered at Mrs Garcia who had stuck her head out of her door to see what the commotion was about. 

"I believe it was simply a matter of mis-communication, Ray," Ben tried again placatingly, wishing his lover would calm down - or at least continue his tirade somewhere more private. 

The detective paused from his ceaseless banging to prod a finger at Ben's chest. "Mis-communication!? You thought all Americans were perverts! Ha, I like that, Fraser!" 

Clearly, from his body language, he did not like that. "Well, perhaps if you'd articulated your plan better, Ray, I might have caught on," Ben whispered, wincing at the delicacy of the situation. 

"Like, this I need!" Ray delivered another deafening crescendo on the door. "The most innocent man in the world .... " 

Ben's back straightened. "I may be inexperienced but I assure you I am not completely ignorant. I am ... I am a Mountie!" 

"Wild Mountie orgies, huh?" 

"All I'm saying is you proceeded from a false assumption, Ray." He checked the hall and lowered his voice. "I didn't need your innovative demonstration, Ray. I already know how to apply... ah, protection." 

"And another thing - what do you mean you already know?!" 

"Why yes, Ray, it's perfectly simple afterall." He could feel his face blushing - oh dear. 

"You already *know?*" 

"Yes, Ray. Is banging your head on the door wise?" 

"You put me through all that palaver with the cucumber and you already know?" 

Fraser was becoming just the teeniest bit irritated. "I'm not apologising," he asserted stiffly. 

"Ha!" Ray spat succinctly, robbed for words. 

"I'm really not apologising, Ray - " 

"So you said." Bang, bang, bang. "I'm still waiting out here!!! - " 

" - I'm not. I refuse to apologise - " 

"Hello in there. You got one minute then I kick down the door - " 

"Categorically refuse, in fact. Though I admit to some guilt - " 

"Forty seconds! - " 

" - In that I wasn't sensitive enough to - 

" - Thirty! - " 

" - Your position - " 

" - Ten! - " 

" - And I should have understood the symbolism - " 

" - Nine, eight, seven! - " 

"And, well, I'm sorry for not trusting you implicitly, Ray! - " 

"Six, five - " 

" - And I'm terribly sorry for upsetting you - " 

" - Four, three, two - " 

" - And I take full responsibility for this most unfortunate misunderstanding." 

"One!" The door opened and Mr Mustafi, naked and babbling, ran back to his apartment as Ray turned to Benny. He nodded curtly. "Apology accepted, Benny," he declared magnanimously as he ushered the still apologising mountie into the bathroom. 

Ben stopped mid-apology and blinked, only just realising that Ray had entered with him and was barricading the door. Before he could open his mouth, Ray's scalding tongue was pushing at his, demanding entry. When he'd succeeded in getting Ben hot and panting, Ray eased back. He untied his lover's gown, parted it at groin but left it covering the now quivering torso, and sunk smoothly to his knees. Ben tensed immediately but Ray ran soothing hands across his body, kissed his covered belly. "Relax, Benny. Let me love you, okay?" 

"So, Benny," he said a little later when the Mountie was shuddering from something else than anxiety, "you really thought Americans decorated vegetables with condoms, right? Used 'em in weird sexual rituals?" 

"Oh, well, " Ben moaned as those tantalising lips flicked out at the droplets forming on the rampant head of his penis and the hands rubbed the harsh cotton against his nipple. "I just thought it was another, groan, example of American culture I didn't do that again, Ray - understand. Like - God, Ray!" 

"Like what, lover?" Ray asked conversationally, wetting his fingers and gently trailing slippy patterns all over the man's groin, delighting in the quivers it produced and the rich musk his lover exuded. 

"Like believing Elvis to be, groan, alive and law-abiding citizens carrying guns." He panted, feeling the approach of orgasm, "Like locking bank clerks away in those inhuman automatic teller machines and - " 

Only one way to shut him up... Ray grasped his hips firmly and swallowed Fraser whole. 

* * *


End file.
